I intermittently fall victim to one of the biggest problems with the internet. I want to tangle with a friend on Facebook for something they posted. I take an adversarial position, and sometimes, I may go a little too far with the adverbs and adjectives. This might be a many-months-too-late apology for saying someone was a batshit lunatic. The emotions run high sometimes when trying to protect the soul of indie development, you know? I stand by the claim that it is always simultaneously the best time and the worst time to be making games.
Today’s discussion has almost nothing to do with game development. It concerns everyone’s favorite attempt to bring game-thinking into their not-game-thinking world. I want to talk about that popular subject that every B2C non-games company loves to never fund sufficiently: Gamification.
When that word is uttered, there are equal parts eye-rolling and vigorous nodding. The best is when the same person does it at the same time. I may be that person from time to time. I would love to build me some gamification for someone else’s SaaS business. The problem I run into occurs when I discuss the needification for budgetification. When I explain how much it would cost to inject some liquid G into their business, the only streaks that appear are in the CFO’s shorts.
That is some five-star imagery right there, and I am not sorry.
There are many books on this subject on Amazon, and I shall link the whole category in a crass attempt to get some Bezos nickels into my pockets. I know you are not big internet spenders, so I am going to skip talking about why Yu-Kai Cho’s book is good or why you should scroll down and check out Gabe Zichermann’s book. I remain hopeful that someday I will climb the ladder as an Amazon Associate, and today is not likely that day.
So what is the big deal?
Detractors will tell you that if you need to add gamification to your app, it is probably not worth it in the first place. Other people will sneer at the labors of habit-forming, considering it to be some sort of PBR tallboy in a world of fancy, delicious, snobby beers that are more pleasing to the palette. If you had to Google PBR Tallboy, you may mentally substitute White Claw or Two-Buck Chuck. The point is that they consider it to be cheap and beneath them.
I decided to sneak a phrase into the previous paragraph to help explain what I think is important about gamification—habit-forming.
I first stumbled into this term while trying to peddle my services to a random game publishing company that was essentially flopping about the internet like a fish out of water. They accepted a meeting after I gave them a reasonable dissertation on some simple product improvements for one of their better products without explaining that in my neighborhood, a truck comes around on Tuesday each week to pick up stinky cans of content that have much in common with their ideas.
As I made my way to the conference room for some random “apparent decision maker”, I could not help but notice dozens of copies of a yellow book scattered around the office.
I noted the author and the title and bought it when I returned home. If you are ever going to buy anything I link in these blog posts, this is the one thing you must buy: The Power of Habit.
The meeting was otherwise unproductive, and that company has since caught fire, fallen over, and sunk into the swamp.
That book made the whole visit worthwhile for me. I learned how to stop chewing my fingernails and applied some of the book’s logic to lose significant weight.
In addition to “Very Life Change, So Habit”, it also helped to explain a significant amount of the importance behind gamification.
The book’s point is that habit-forming is hard, and habit-breaking is nearly impossible. If you can find ways to incorporate new habits into your application, you will make friends — and by friends, I mean customers. This is really what you need to do to be successful with gamification.
The problem with bolting gamification into your application is that oftentimes, your application is not wired for event-driven systems or is missing the necessary “Zazz.” If you need to know what that looks like and have been living under a rock for the past decade, you can download an application called Duolingo to get a sense of what a decent gamification implementation looks like.
I see a few Spock-eyebrows going up in the audience. Yes, I believe that Duolingo has a great implementation of gamification. I have shelled out a few dollars for Duolingo, and neither I nor my children are better Italian speakers. How can I say it is a great gamification system if we didn’t become Italian speakers? Fair question. I can objectively look at a system and admire its form and function and, at the same time, be a disinterested churn statistic.
I think that last point is worth making. While gamification gives you a little boost in engagement and may become a new habit for some people, it is not a universal magical tool that will grant you total world domination.
Now that I think about it, maybe that last bit of brutal honesty is why no one has paid me to make a Gamification for them.
That is all for this week!
